After Dark, January 24, 2012

Whoring
Artists make choices - should we respect them?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

Biz is part of an arch-political rap group in Quebec called Loco Locass whose most popular song, Libérez-nous des Libéraux (Free Us From The Liberals), became an anthem here. Biz participated in a documentary, in 2005, called Star-Apoplexie, a trenchant criticism of another Quebec phenomenon, Star Académie - an American Idolesque talent show. (Many people point to SA as a perfect example of convergence for good or ill - produced by TVA, part of Quebecor, and plugged relentlessly in Quebecor magazines and newspapers with the show's music CDs made and sold by Musicor/Quebecor in its own record stores, Archambault.)

Well...

The Upstage Interview: Cameryn Moore

They aren’t real sex calls, but they are based on actual calls.

Upstage Host Eric Sukhu spoke with writer/performer Cameryn Moore about  Phone Whore presented at MainLine Theatre.   Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo Editor-in-chief.

UPSTAGE

How many years have you been part of Montreal Fringe? 

MOORE

This is my sixth year.

The Sunday Read: Profile of Tonya Lee Williams

The World According to Tonya Lee Williams

Williams heads to Montreal this week as recipient of yet another big honour: Black Theatre Workshop's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

by David King

    

From her early days on TV's Polka Dot Door to producing and directing shows like Da Kink In My Hair and CBC's Gospel Jubilee, actress Tonya Lee Williams is one of Canada's few artists of colour who has successfully held down a career in Canada while keeping things real amidst the trappings of L.A.

    

The founder of Toronto's ReelWorld Film Festival, which provides opportunities for artists of colour to create film and television, Williams has kept the festival going strong for over a decade. Having dedicated her life to stage and screen since graduating from Ryerson in the late 1970s, she's showing us how positive focus, hard work and devotion to one's craft can truly pave the way to change.

      

Profile: Soprano Hiromi Omura

(Photo credit: Yves Renaud)

Hiromi Omura is Not Madama Butterfly

By Richard Burnett

There are not many great opera singers who come out of Japan. And fewer who take the opera world by storm. But Hiromi Omura makes opera aficionados swoon.

“I played the violin when I was child – I wanted to be a great violin player,” Omura tells The Charlebois Post. “But I began too late. And then one day I found my voice.”

Omura became Madama Butterfly.

But Japan’s celebrated soprano has been fighting that stereotype ever since.

Theatre For Thought, January 21, 2012

NOTES FROM THE LONDON UNDERGROUND

joel fishbane

A few weeks ago, while most people were braving the Canadian cold, I was across the pond braving the damp chill of Mother England. It was my second time in the Queen’s country and as always I was struck by the giddy joy of the bookworm in the bookshop. London has long been a theatrical culture – even the Changing of the Guard smacks of theatrics – and the West End is both a madhouse and a wonderland. Having grown up in Toronto, I was reminded of my youth, when there were more shows then there were weeks of the year. 

The Friday Five, January 20, 2012

5 Reasons Why There Should Be More Nudity in Montreal Theatre. 

I hardly need to list 5 reasons, do I?  Nudity is a reason in and of itself. This may as well be a Friday One. The reason there should be more nudity in theatre is because it’s nudity, and it’s great. But so as not to break with tradition, here are five other reasons why there should be more nudity in Montreal theatre. 

by Matt G of Matt and Kyle and Matt

1. Actors are beautiful.
Actors and Actresses are sickeningly beautiful. More beautiful than regular people. And as punishment for being so beautiful they should be naked all the time.  

CharPo's Real Theatre, January 20, 2012

Review: Ars Poetica

Noel Burton, Danielle Desormeaux, Elana Dunkleman

Carry Me Away!

Fundamental concepts of theatre are raised...especially in winter

by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

As I trudged through the ice-slush to get to tonight's opening of Arthur Holden's Ars Poetica, I realized I desperately needed a mood change. I didn't need to roar with laughter (I don't even expect comedies to do that - and Holden's piece is billed as a comedy). I needed what theatre does best: take me and those around me away, make me forget the here and now, put me in a head-place where ideas and visions and emotions swirl together.  Sure, a good laugh would be nice too, but all I wanted was theatre that was theatre and not TV, movies, radio or a book...or now.

First-Person: Tedi Tafel on Janvier

THOUGHTS ON JANVIER

I understand the body to be the site and the vehicle of direct experience, its active and open form continually receiving and responding to the world around it.

by Tedi Tafel

I am interested in exploring movement as an entranceway into the deeper layers of human experience. I create performances for public spaces because I believe that performance should exist in all kinds of settings, not only in theatres. I also do so as a poetic way of looking at how we interact with and are affected by our surroundings. For me, the language of movement is the perfect means to both navigate and express this interface. Perhaps it is the very ambiguity of gesture that so suits the articulation of this fluid and indeterminate exchange. My work has been shown in various urban and natural sites including a parking lot, a forest clearing, a rooftop, a winter cabin and a storefront.

CharPo's Picture of The Week, January 19, 2011

Insights: The Poster Design For Three Sisters

by Rosaura Guzman

The concept for the poster for Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov’s most famous play, arose from our discussions about the broken dreams of these educated women from the privileged classes in pre-revolutionary Russia.